When Mike Kelly sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with his in-laws last year, he was hiding a world of worries.
He’d lost his job the week before.
Kelly ran a sales support team in a division of Motorola that sells emergency communications equipment. As part of his job, he managed his group’s finances, so he knew that his department’s budget was coming up short.
As a precaution, he’d maxed out on his home equity loan, knowing that it would be hard to get a loan if he were unemployed.
He wasn’t surprised when the ax fell, but that didn’t make it any easier.
An outgoing type who’d recently completed an MBA, he figured he’d manage to land on his feet. But he felt responsible for the people he’d hired. Some of them were laid off, while others were left working in jobs that became even more stressful.
Most of all, the 44-year-old father of two worried about his family.
Not wanting to spoil their holiday, he didn’t tell them he’d lost his job until after Thanksgiving.
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This year’s dinner won’t be free of worries. Far from it.
But Kelly and many others who lost good corporate jobs aren’t waiting for big companies to start hiring again.
They’ve moved on–out of necessity or ambition–reinventing themselves in the tightest labor market in a decade.
Economists tell us that recessions wring the excess out of businesses, forcing companies to restructure and become more efficient so they can prosper when demand comes back.
But it’s resourceful people like Kelly and Steve O’Neill who remind us what it really means to restructure.
O’Neill was a computer network administrator when he lost his job last November at Allstate after 17 years at the insurer’s Northbrook headquarters.
He knew his odds of getting work in his field were slim when he went online and found a single position comparable to the one he’d lost–in a Las Vegas casino.
He’d been hunting work for three months when he found out that John M. Smyth’s Homemakers furniture chain planned to open a store in the northwest suburbs in spring. So he went to the library and checked out 20 books on furniture.
He studied sofa construction and wood finishes from maple to mahogany. He learned the difference between Queen Anne and Louis XV styles.
He still subscribes to computer magazines, visits trade shows and tries to keep up with the latest in wireless networking, but he’s not looking back.
He likes his sales colleagues at Homemakers, many of them Fortune 500 refugees like himself.
His salary is a lot less, but he looks on the bright side. “I’m more physically fit. We do a lot of walking up and down the stairs in a 12-hour day.”
Meanwhile Kelly, the MBA, has strapped on a tool belt and makes house calls in a dark blue Ford pickup truck with signs that read, “Handy Mike the Home Handyman.”
Handy Mike Inc., based in Downers Grove, specializes in repairs that take two to four hours–the types of jobs that contractors often turn down.
Kelly hopes to grow his two-person service into something much bigger.
When he was researching his business plan he looked into franchises, where owners do all the marketing and management and hire tradespeople to do the repairs.
But Kelly believes the right way to learn a business is by starting from the ground up. “The customer has to come first. How else would I get to know their needs without being out there myself?”
He’s kept his start-up costs to a minimum. A neighbor put up his Web site (www.handymike.com).
He leased the new truck–“Appearances are important”–ordered signs and joined the local Chamber of Commerce.
He figures that if he can make it through April, his business will be in good shape.
“I’ve got a lot of different worries now, but I’ve taken control of my destiny.”
For that, he’ll be giving thanks this year.
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